Where's the nearest exit? ServiceNow continues on acquisition spree with interior mapping startup Mapwize

PostgreSQL acceleration outfit Swarm64 also nabbed

ServiceNow has done some digging between the sofa cushions and found enough loose change to bag a couple of acquisitions.

First up is interior mapping specialist Mapwize. The French startup focuses on modelling internal building spaces to help "define the style, position assets, show meeting rooms availability [and] add rules to the direction engine," according to the company. It claims to reduce real estate running costs by "right-siz[ing clients'] office space based on occupancy."

ServiceNow is an IT helpdesk company with an ambition to become the "defining enterprise software company of the 21st century" through the magic of workflow. As such, Mapwize might integrate with facility and management or HR workflow. It would also help companies manage and update floor maps based on usage trends and evolving real-estate needs, ServiceNow said.

It is a timely move seeing as companies were looking at "hybrid" home and office working as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, claimed Blake McConnell, employee workflows veep at ServiceNow.

Kate Hanaghan, chief research officer at TechMarketView, said that the 2014-founded startup added "an important capability to support both the hybrid office experience for employees and the need to manage the space."

More difficult to fit into the ServiceNow jigsaw is Swarm64. The Berlin startup builds technology specifically designed to accelerate open-source RDBMS PostgreSQL – in particular its analytical performance – as co-founder and CEO Thomas Richter told The Register last year.

The $1bn-revenue company said acquisition would help "customers more effectively and efficiently manage data across many different use cases to execute complex, high-speed data analytics at a mass scale." More specifically, though, these seem to be use cases within ServiceNow's Now platform, which uses PostgreSQL as one of its databases.

"Swarm64's expertise in database performance and scalability allows us to plan for the future by helping us deliver increasingly larger and more intelligent workflows for our customers," Joe Davis, ServiceNow's senior vice president of platform engineering, said in a blog.

"In addition to bringing new database talent to ServiceNow's engineering ranks, the acquisition of Swarm64 signifies ServiceNow's latest investment in open source. Swarm64's open-source-based database technology works extremely well for large-scale datasets, ultimately helping customers obtain the enterprise-wide insights needed to handle high volumes of data transactions and run sophisticated analytics in real time."

This month's purchases follow ServiceNow's May buyout of Lightstep, an observability solution for cloud-based applications.

In March, ServiceNow also bought Intellibot, a specialist in the robotic process automation space, in the hope it would "automate workflows and drive productivity." ®